An overview of what came through my Google Reader subscriptions recently.

• Popular Science -: Insurgents Hack Predator Video Feed With $26 Software
  from: Temboz – interesting articles feed on 17 Dec 2009
• New Google app shows how much of a website’s content is “above the fold”
  from: UX Magazine on 17 Dec 2009
• Video: Stop Sign Designed by Committee
  from: Clients From Hell on 16 Dec 2009
• LEDs save energy, but not lives
  from: GreenTech Pastures on 16 Dec 2009
• SFPD won’t investigate hit-and-run car-v-bike accident
  from: Boing Boing on 16 Dec 2009
• Shared: How to use CSS @font-face
  from: Mike Industries on 16 Dec 2009
• 50 reasons why global warming isn’t natural
  from: New Scientist – Online News on 15 Dec 2009
• Direction House by TNA Architects
  from: MoCoLoco on 15 Dec 2009
• Don’t fear the fold – people do scroll
  from: 456 Berea Street on 14 Dec 2009
• Suggestive Toyota ad gets a good pounding
  from: AdFreak on 14 Dec 2009
• The Making of Vesper
  from: i love typography, the typography and fonts blog on 14 Dec 2009
• The Future of News, Tablets, and Business Models
  from: Baekdal.com on 14 Dec 2009
• Open Mike: The Superefficiency House
  from: The Online Photographer on 13 Dec 2009
• Charlie's Diary: What are the long-term consequences …?
  from: Temboz – interesting articles feed on 13 Dec 2009
• "And now, elephants on trampolines…"
  from: John Nack on Adobe on 12 Dec 2009
• A Small Controversy
  from: The Online Photographer on 12 Dec 2009
• Filmmaker posts $500 short on Youtube, nets film deal worth millions
  from: PVC | The Entire Site on 12 Dec 2009
• 101 Things I Learned In Interaction Design School
  from: UX Magazine on 11 Dec 2009

EDIT May 25th 2010
I have so far confirmed this “bug” exists in CS4 and CS5, description and two possible solutions follow below

Recently I’ve been testing a JVC GY-HM100 HD video camera (or GY-HM100E to be precise, since it’s a European variant) and I’ve uncovered an issue with audio imported in Adobe Premiere CS4 that appears to be badly documented. Note this is not a review of the camera. I’ll have to do much more work with it to pass any judgement, so for now I direct you elsewhere for opinions on how the camera behaves.

I first noticed the sound issue when I imported MP4 files into Premiere CS4 (GY-HM100 can also record MOV files which I have not tested). The problem is that on some parts of a clip the waveform goes crazy and there’s nothing but very loud noise (maxed out) on both or just one of the channels for a few seconds but then it goes back to normal. You can imagine my shock when I first played back a very silent clip of a pre dawn nature shoot with speakers near maximum only to receive a proper wake up “hum”.

same clip, two very different waveforms (original left, converted version on the right)

The files are otherwise fine when played through other software such as VLC player. Other people report the same thing is happening in Soundbooth CS4. Yes, I tried it out and the same thing is there as well but I never used it before so for me it hasn’t been an issue. Why or how this is triggered is still a mystery to me. It seems to be independent of mode/resolution (I was shooting in 1080p and 720p), type of sound recording (external or internal mic) or (based on forum discussion) operating system. I’m not sure how exactly but it would appear to be a codec problem in Adobe CS4 rather than anything being wrong with the camera.

The DVinfo forum thread does provide a temporary bypass though. And it is to be found through a conversion tool MP4toMPG by MIK Digital that converts audio (mp2 @ 320kbps) and copies the video 1:1 into an MPG2 container file. In short, it does the job. The app is written in German, however it is very simple to use and does everything in 3 steps:

1. select source folder
2. select target folder
3. execute

Obviously converting files is not a long-term solution and I’ll keep searching for an answer. But for now this hack/bypass will have to do so we can keep shooting and editing the footage.

Featured comment (segment) by Fredrik Lindau

I have found that if you copie the whole map-structure from the memmorycard to your harddrive the clip works fine. But if you only copie the MP4-file you get this sound issue.

The above mentioned solution has now been confirmed. Simply copy the entire directory structure (not just the clips or clip folders) from the card and audio will play just fine in Premiere CS4 and CS5. It’s a bit of a mess to find specific clips but ultimately it avoids transcoding so there you go.

For the past few months I´ve been wading through an impenetrable fog that is The Thin Red Line, a 1962 paperback by James Jones, and after battling to about half way I think I´m ready to quit.

I am, infinitely more than I already was, in awe of Terrence Malick who managed to read through this battlefield of a book (though he did take 20 years off) to create a visually stunning adaptation into a movie that, if the world was in any way fair, would have won a great many Oscars. But then Saving Private Ryan happened and you know the rest…

Reviewers of the novel on Amazon obviously don´t agree with my conclusions, claiming the movie is underdeveloped. Among other things. Well…the film is monstrously long as it is and if it followed the book any closer (and it stays pretty true) people could order lunch and dinner during a screening and still have a siesta before anything of substance happened. Because that´s how the book feels like. You read and you read and… nothing. He´s still stuck on a pointless little detail.

The narrative is long-winded, sentences stuffed with filler apparently designed to draw you into the scene visually but achieving what I´d say is an undesired effect of losing track of the main development. On the other hand the style might be ideally suited to people with no or little of their own imagination, who require every twig, sound, leaf, wave, smell, thought and gunshot described in detail to paint the atmosphere and fill in the blanks. For everyone else it gets in the way of the more important thing – story or action development. To put it in perspective, what takes 15 seconds on film takes about 15 pages in the book.

I can see why Jones writes the way he does, after all he wants people to understand the reality of combat, the mindset of a soldier. But describing the mindset and perspective of each and every soldier in a company is a bit over the top. Bloated. When you´re seeing Guadalcanal campaign through the eyes of 10 or 20 different people it´s a bit hard to keep track of who´s who and what happened to him earlier.

Guess I prefer the more film like approach to books where you pick it up and it doesn´t let go until the end.

I might return to The Thin Red Line someday, purely because I think I owe it to the movie, however for the time being I can´t bring myself to read another page. Until then I think I´ll watch the beautifully shot Mallicks film version a few more times.